Syllabus

Shinseido uses a structured syllabus to guide students through the long process of learning a martial art. However, the syllabus is there merely to act as a guide. In reality Shinseido is an open ended martial system, there really is no end to the learning process. The Techniques page shows examples of the kind of techniques employed in Shinseido.

Shinseido teachers recognise that individual students have different needs, different attributes, and different levels of fitness and health. All these factors are taken into account so that different students may be taught in slightly different ways to each other. It is a primary goal of Shinseido instructors to help people fulfil their potential as individuals, rather than to produce practitioners who are identical clones of one another.

• The student grades, known as kyu grades. These start at 9th kyu and work down to 1st kyu, each kyu grade being signified by a different coloured belt.
• The practitioner, or dan, grades. These start at 1st dan and work upwards. Generally dan grades wear a plain black belt. A practitioner would generally be considered a teacher in their own right after achieving the level of 3rd dan (after around 15 years of training).

Achieving 1st dan black belt usually takes around 5 or 6 years, depending on how seriously the student trains. But this not the end of the journey, or even a mark of expertise. It merely indicates that the student has achieved a good level of competence in the basics of the system. In reality the learning process never stops.

The belt system for the kyu grades is as follows: